Fair

Video Review

Overview

An endless winter has fallen on Earth. Eldritch horrors now
prowl the wilderness. You are Ash, a man battling with his own internal
Eldritch horror while trying to create a safe haven for his daughter. To do so,
Ash will need to venture out into the wilderness to scavenge supplies, rescue
survivors, and battle back against the horrors.

Story

Fade to Silenceis a rogue-lite survival game, so storytelling is minimalist. Players will learn about the world from exploring, chatting with survivors, listening to the Eldritch horror, and dreaming during rest breaks. The writing is generally ham fisted, awkward, and at times cringe inducing. The interactions with survivors are too occasional to develop any serious attachment to them. The Eldritch horror that pesters Ash is maddening for all the wrong reasons, as it is repetitive and annoying instead of creepy. At best, the story is context for the game, at worst, it’s a nuisance.

Gameplay

Fade to Silence mixes
elements of Dark Souls-type action,
survival, and rogue-lite gameplay. Ash’s actions are restricted by his stamina
bar, so players need to choose their actions wisely in combat. Resources do not
respawn, so healing items are limited. Dodging, parrying, and blocking is a
must for long term success. The combat system is solid. Attacks are well
telegraphed, leaving much to player skill. There are a few hitches where Ash
may get stuck on something in the environment, but it is not a common
occurrence.

The game offers two difficulties. Explorer mode has
unlimited lives, more resources, better followers, and is generally more
forgiving. The main mode is not. Resources and respawns are limited, so players
will need to plan ahead of time what they will craft to get themselves out of
the gate and moving forward. Surviving outside of the settlement is tough. Staying
warm is a constant challenge, especially when blizzards drive down the
temperatures and drop visibility down to zero. Fade to Silence is not the type of game players will master on the
first playthrough. It’s a game of trial and error to find out the most
efficient way through the tech tree and the map.

Being a rogue-lite, permanent death does not wipe all
progress. Players are able to purchase boons for their next playthrough with
items collected from major story events and clearing strongholds. The boons
range from bonus starting resources to saved buildings and equipment.
Additionally, Ash becomes stronger and more resilient each playthrough by
collecting certain items. They are a huge time saver and create some feeling of
progression between attempts.

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Getting into Fade to
Silence can be difficult. The tutorial is barebones, with players only
taught the basics of combat and gathering before being sent into the world.
There are slightly more detailed instructions in the survival guide, but better
tooltips would have been appreciated.

The pace of the game is slow. Ash has a slow, plodding
footspeed and limited stamina for sprinting. Unlocking the dogsled and wolves
will speed up the pace by a bit, but I find the dogsled controls to be clumsy. The
hassle of having to move the dog sled into place, hopping on, travelling, and hopping
off barely outweighs walking on your own two feet. Additionally, players will
need to stick to the path, or they will be in for a bumpy ride and risk
flipping the sled. Navigating is particularly brutal because there is no GPS type
arrow, so players will need to squint through the snow to find the path and constantly
pull up the map to figure out where to go. Early playthroughs are brutal until the sled
is unlocked and the ability to retain the sled between playthroughs is
purchased. The slow walking pace and the large distances between points of
interest means players will spend quite a bit of time staring at the wintery
environment.

Fade to Silence is
a real grind due to the repeated playthroughs, the poor tutorials, the slow
movement speeds, and missing quality of life features. Base building is a time
and resource expensive process, but buildings can’t be moved once built. The
buildings that are retained between playthroughs appear to stay in the same
place, so players will need to destroy perfectly good buildings. Starting new
games will take players through the initial tutorial each time, instead of providing
the option to skip through.

The controls in Fade
to Silence is rough. The game is built with consoles in mind, as controllers
feel more natural. The menus are radial and designed for thumb sticks. Item
management and crafting feels messy and unintuitive. The options for PC users
are also limited. Basics like toggle to aim or sprint is missing. Several menu
keys are hardcoded, so those who don’t use WASD or QWERTY keyboards may have
trouble.

Visuals

The visuals are a mixed bag. Fade to Silence’s environment is nice. A lot of time has clearly
been spent to create the winter wasteland where nature and Eldritch horrors
battle to reclaim the remains of humanity. The enemy character design is good.
The Eldritch horrors look alien, serving as a foil to the natural environment. On
the other hand, the character models are rather clunky and awkward looking.

Audio

The audio experience is rough. The sound effects are
probably the best of the bunch. A lot of attention has been paid to the sound
of footsteps treading across a variety of wintery terrain. The sound effect
alerts for low health, hunger, and cold are played way too often. Replacing
half of the sound effect cues with visual cues would provide the same effect
and be less annoying. The music itself is decent, mostly excelling at creepy
horror-style music to build tension. The biggest issue lies in the inappropriate
or overuse of tension setting music. The squeaky strings kick in randomly for
no apparent reason, making the music ineffective when tension should be built
up. The voice acting is also poor. Ash’s voice actor is barely passable, and
everyone else falls behind. The player is supposed to develop a fatherly bond
with Ash’s daughter, but her voice actor is bad enough for me to desire as
little contact with her as possible.

Overall

The
premise of a hardcore rogue-lite survival game is an attractive one.
Unfortunately, Fade to Silence struggles
with lousy writing, bad pacing, poor quality of life decisions, and a clunky
feeling that never goes away. I can see a very small niche of gamers who will
be willing to put up with the game’s quirks in exchange for a tough game
combining Dark Souls-type combat and
survival gameplay. On the other hand, most gamers can avoid the game’s clumsy execution
and never feel like they’ve missed out in life.